Christmas Gifts
by stillgoldie1899
Summary: The newsies all love Christmas, and the giving of gifts, except for one. Will anything change his mind?


He said he hated Christmas, and wanted it left at that, but of course, there was more to it then that. Christmas was this big deal around the lodging house, everyone got all excited about it. Kloppman cut up newspaper, and made paste, and some of the younger boys made chains of the paper, and painted them with leftover whitewash paint and whatever other colors they could find. The older, taller boys would string it around the lobby in long strands of fragile paper, so delicate you couldn't touch it, or risk the newspaper tearing, even with it's coating of paint. Evergreens and other such leafy things were gathered from where they could be found, and bunched up with spare string, hung around. Flowers, gathered by neighborhood girls and dried, were given as early gifts to the boys they liked, and added to the green for color, just a little, local thing they did, so the lobby would be even more inviting on Christmas eve, when some of those same girls could come by to see their beaus, and exchange gifts. It wasn't much, but it made everything festive.

Of course, more important then the gifts shared with a few girls were the gifts shared with each other. And as newsies weren't the richest in the land, the boys made each other presents. Short bits of poems, funny or serious, or sketches done in bits of charcoal. Strange looking shiny stones, or marbles, or small interesting photographs were carefully hoarded in the months leading up, or even earlier then that, to be handed around by the boys on Christmas morning, since hanging up half of your only pair of stockings was plain silly.

The important part was the giving, not the getting, although everyone loved getting presents. It was just that the best gifts were always the poems or sketches. Those were the gifts everyone wanted. But in order to get any, you had to be willing to make some, too.

And that was where he started having problems. Because he could make up poems in his head, he did it all the time. Short funny ones, longer, sweeter ones. Love poems to pretty girls to be quoted when courting, or jesting joke poems about fellow newsies. At the drop of a hat, he had them. His problem with that was that he couldn't write.

He'd never been taught. He could barely read, and all he could mark was his own first name, which he'd learned so he could sign Kloppman's ledger. But that was as far as he could go.

He could have asked someone else to write them down for him. Bumlets, for instance, had beautiful handwriting. His mother had sent him to the parish church when he was little, to learn reading and writing from the Jesuits. From what he'd heard, the priests were really stern taskmasters, and if you didn't have writing worthy of a handcopied bible by the time they were done with you, you were a complete failure.

So, he could ask Bumlets to write down his poems, but then they wouldn't be from just him, they'd be from Bumlets, and since everyone knew Bumlets' handwriting, they'd think it was from just him.

And then there were sketches. He was full of ideas for sketches. Funny little scenes, and caricatures, and more serious things like portraits. But he was hopeless at drawing more then stick figures, and even those didn't have straight limbs. Just like with Bumlets, there were boys among the newsies who were amazing artists. Swifty, for instance, could draw cartoons that could make anyone laugh. And Pie, he could sketch things in charcoal that looked like they could just come off the surface they'd been drawn on, and be real. He could ask them to draw the things he saw in his head, but…they wouldn't be his drawings.

When he was younger, he'd passed around the same marbles and small bird bones and things that boys collected. But he'd wanted a poem or drawing, something for him, and him alone, and when he realized that he was never going to be able to give anything like that back, he just started grumbling about Christmas. It was a mask, he actually liked Christmas, but he was too ashamed.

And then it became his thing. He was the grouch about Christmas, always counted on to bitch about the carols and the decorations. He got into it a bit more then he should, turning the whole thing into a joke. The only problem was that he started to really hate it, after awhile. The candles in windows, and trees, and people going around all cheerful. He started hating it and being grumpy the entire month of December. And on Christmas eve, while some of the boys were spending time with their girls, and the others were running around the lobby singing songs, he slipped out of the lodging house and began to wander.

As could be expected, he wandered past a church or two, and almost went in. He could hear the strains of choir songs, music he recognized, that tugged on heartstrings, but right then, he didn't want to listen.

Instead, he ended up in the park. It was way too cold to be sitting out there, and he knew it, but he didn't care. He knew he wasn't going to have any…revelations out there, in the cold. He just wanted some quiet. The sky was clear, and the stars were bright, and it was damn cold, but it was beautiful at the same time.

The last thing he was expecting was a girl to show up. Just one of the local girls, one of the pretty ones whose name he didn't really know. She was bundled up in a tattered coat, her hands shoved deep in the pockets.

"You, too, huh?" Was all she said before sitting next to him.

"Huh?" The only intelligent thing he could think to say, and it wasn't even that intelligent.

"You don't like Christmas either. The others said you'd slipped out. Which is a shame, because I had this for you." She handed him a small envelope, clearly made by hand, out of the kind of paper they wrapped parcels in.

"This is for me?" He kept talking, words coming out of his mouth, sounding dumber by the minute.

"Yes. Merry Christmas." She leaned in quickly, kissing his cheek, before standing and hurrying off into the night. She hadn't given him a moment to even react.

He couldn't open it. He just stared at it. Now he had to give her something back. And he had nothing to give a girl like her. Unless the envelope was a joke. But he'd have to open it to even know. And he was too afraid.

He was freezing there, just holding the envelope, horribly conflicted. Maybe in the morning, he'd open it. And maybe he'd get Bumlets to help him write something for her. Maybe he'd get Bumlets to teach him to write, he had a whole year, and next Christmas he could give her something he wrote himself.

Next year was a long way away. Maybe the pretty girl would like someone else by then. Who knew? Girls were confusing. It was cold, and girls were confusing. Standing, he finally started back in the direction of the lodging house.

Maybe Christmas wasn't so very horrible?

No, he was pretty sure it still was. But a pretty girl had given him a note in an envelope, and at least that was something.


End file.
